


Unremarkable, Unintentional, Clumsy

by yeahitshowed



Category: Orphan Black (TV), The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 12:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeahitshowed/pseuds/yeahitshowed
Summary: 'Across the table sat the woman, her steepled fingers pressed to her lips.“You came back,” she said.“Yeah, ‘course I did. You barely let me talk last time.”“I told you before, Sarah, I have no interest in talking to you.”“I don’t think that’s true.” Sarah rested an elbow on the table, leaning forward. “I came back, sure, but so did you.”'Orphan Black/TAZ crossover.





	Unremarkable, Unintentional, Clumsy

Thirty years or so into their interminable journey, Sarah was getting real fuckin’ tired of dying.  
Maybe not so much dying as resetting—waking up at the start of the next cycle with Helena telling her through a mouthful of potato chips to “next time not punch first gerblin you see, maybe” or Cosima moping about how close she had been to finally pinning down the Light of Creation. Getting dropkicked by an ogre or succumbing to the Hunger hurt, sure, but opening her eyes to the same old bullshite from the same old bullshite team? Excruciating.

It wasn’t that Sarah didn’t like her expedition buddies. She did. (For the most part.) She was thankful to have her sister along for the ride, obviously, even if she annoyed the living piss out of her. Krystal was a great captain—none of them would have made it through the first cycle without her, that was for bloody sure. MK had mostly kept to herself ever since she’d had to make it through a year alone, obsessively updating her thousand digital journals, but she was nice enough. It was the other three that made Sarah wonder if Pan was enacting some godly punishment for her lack of piety. Cosima and Delphine had become insufferable ever since they shacked up around cycle 12; none of the crew could keep track of their many breakups and makeups, despite how much they had to hear about both. Alison was still in denial about their whole situation, frequently chattering about their imminent journey home. Her first death had quieted her up for a bit, but it was still perfectly common to walk onto the ship’s deck to the sound of her talking poor MK’s ear off about how nice it’ll be to see their friends and family again.

Their current cycle hadn’t been terrible so far; this world was way more populated than most of the planes they stumbled on, the citizens of its many cities only slightly wary of the group. Thanks to Cosima’s increasingly-accurate tracking, they soon found themselves in the territory of a civilization called Tesseralia, whose governor verified that they did indeed have the Light of Creation in their possession. They were directed to a temple-ish place, the First Monastery, where a kindly Abbess sized each of them up. To everyone’s surprise—no one’s more than Sarah’s—the Abbess determined that out of the seven travelers, Sarah was the best equipped to prove herself worthy of taking the Light of Creation. 

“She will stay here for a year?” Delphine repeated the Abbess’s declaration with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Don’t you worry yourself, I’ll be back before you know it,” Sarah said, flashing a shit-eating grin. 

“There are bunk beds, yes?” Helena inquired, eating—something. The Monastery had not provided them any food. To Sarah, she said, “I will take bottom bunk if you swear to not step on my head again.” 

“That was once and I was five,” Sarah reminded her. “But, Helena—I don’t think you’re coming along.” 

Helena blinked, turning back to the Abbess. “This is true?”

“We can only take one,” the Abbess said apologetically. 

“It’s really not that long,” Cosima chimed in. “Considering we’ve been together for like thirty—ow!”

Alison had gripped Cosima’s arm with razor-sharp and perfectly manicured nails (thanks to Krystal, who  
had found a new hobby in the past few years). “It feels like forever, doesn’t it,” she said in a shrill voice. 

“I really will be back before you know it,” Sarah said to Helena, brushing some of the wild hair out of her eyes. “With all the fancy restaurants they’ve got in this place? You won’t even notice I’m gone.” 

“I will notice,” Helena said solemnly. Still resolutely chewing her mystery food, she said, “Do not die in stupid way, sestra. But if you do, tell me about it later.” 

“Will do,” Sarah said, trying to ignore the Abbess’s confused look. Her six companions took off, leaving Sarah to a year of peace and meditation. 

Initially, she was not a fan. Hours of quiet introspection were not exactly Sarah’s thing, but, with some firm encouragement from her instructors, she got the hang of it. More than the hang of it, actually. After a while, the Abbess called Sarah into her office, apparently impressed with her progress. She started learning a new technique under the Abbess’s tutelage: the art of Parlay, an ability to summon someone or something into a sort of liminal space. The rules of Parlay, however, were not so much to Sarah’s liking. In order to negotiate this liminal space, the Parlayer must make themself totally vulnerable. The other person can do whatever they want, but Sarah? Completely helpless.

“I’m not allowed to do anything?” Sarah clarified during one of their early sessions. “Not even if the other guy takes a swing at me?”

“This is a peacemaking ability,” the Abbess said patiently. “You are inviting a being into a neutral space as  
a sign of humility.”

Sarah snorted. “No offense, but I don’t know how useful this stuff is gonna be for me. The life I live isn’t what you’d call peaceful.”

“Or humble,” the Abbess added with a slight smile. “Nevertheless, one must learn how to Parlay before deigning to wield the Light of Creation.” 

As it turned out, Sarah had use for her new skill sooner than expected. Once completing her training, Sarah was allowed to invite her fellow IPRE members to a makeshift graduation. She had kind of expected the Abbess to just hand over the Light of Creation, maybe in lieu of a diploma or trophy, but instead, she was told that she’d have to Parlay her way to the thing she’d been spending a year earning.

“If you wanted me to talk to the Hunger, you could’ve said so,” Sarah said once the Abbess gave them the room, tipping her head toward the sky. “Oi, cloudface," she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Cough up the Light, will you?”

At least Helena enjoyed her joke. “This is serious, Sarah,” Cosima said, crossing her arms. “We have a  
chance to actually talk to this thing. To find out what it is.”

“It’s a massive load of darkness,” Sarah said incredulously. “It’s a universe-eater. What do you think it’ll do to me?”

“You will probably die,” Delphine said dispassionately. “Then you can tell us what you learned, and we will go from there. I do not see the problem here.”

“It’s not that simple,” MK said quietly. “You know it’s not.”

“Yeah, especially the part where I try to talk to the thing that’s killed us thirty times.”

“This is the only way,” Krystal said, placing a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “If you can find out why the Hunger’s doing this, we might have a real shot at stopping it.”  
Sarah looked to her captain, then to her crew, and let out a long, long sigh. To think she nearly slept through the IPRE mission in the first place. 

Plopping down in the middle of the Abbess’s office, Sarah began focusing on the Hunger, tightly shutting her eyes—and then she wasn’t in the Abbess’s office anymore. Suddenly, Sarah was in an imposingly large boardroom, slunk over a leather chair. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the massive oak table traversing the space, the immaculately clean glass giving the eery impression that there were no windows at all, as if the stormy sky itself was holding the room aloft. It took Sarah a few disoriented moments to realize that she wasn’t alone: seated at the other end of the table was a woman who might as well have been born of the room’s general environment, her sharply cut blonde hair and crisp black suit emanating a cool authority. 

The woman was staring Sarah down, her expression betraying only the slightest hint of confusion. “Wh—” she started before descending into a coughing fit. Sarah snorted out of instinct, earning a truly terrifying glare.

After a few measured deep breaths, the woman asked, “What is this place?”  
“Thought you’d know,” Sarah said, throwing her feet up on the table. (It felt like the appropriate power move.) 

Her eyes fixed on Sarah, the woman rose. “You,” she said. “You brought me here. I felt your—pull.” 

Suddenly remembering the whole humble part, Sarah guiltily pulled her feet down, saying, “I did, yeah. Sarah Manning. Nice to meet you, I guess.” 

“Sarah Manning,” the woman repeated, the words clearing the dust from her voice. She approached Sarah’s side of the table with step after careful step, her gaze focused and unblinking. “And why did you bring me here, Sarah Manning?” 

“Well, it’s more like you brought me here, since—sorry, can I know who I’m talking to? You got a name?”

The woman stopped a foot from Sarah’s chair, splaying her hand on the table. “No,” she said, leaving Sarah unsure of which question she was answering. 

“Okay, that’s…odd.” Sarah fixed her posture, unsuccessfully trying to roll her chair a few inches backward. It was not a roll-y chair, which made the room ten times more unpleasant. “Uh, you’ve been chasing me, I think? And my friends? Wherever we go, whatever plane we’re on, you show up, and since you seem so, you know, interested in us—interested in killing us, at least—I thought we could talk. Learn something about each other.”

The woman cocked her head a fraction, smiling humorlessly. “You thought I would want to talk to you.” 

Sarah again tried to move her chair. “Well, you’ve basically been trying to hunt us for a couple dozen years, so, yeah, I thought—”

“Not ‘trying,’” the woman said in a rapidly strengthening voice. “I have been hunting you, Sarah. Successfully.” 

Through the endless windows, Sarah saw a crack of lightning set the sky ablaze. In one seamless movement, the woman plunged her hand into Sarah’s chest, jet-black flames erupting from her fingertips. Sarah barely had time to register the horrible pain electrifying her nerve endings before she was welcomed into that increasingly familiar nothingness.

And then she was on the floor of their ship, perfectly unharmed, just like every other time. “Bitch,” Sarah said, gingerly putting a hand to her chest.

“It is time for swearing?” Helena said from across the room, swiftly winning a round of arm wrestling with Krystal. “I learned new one in that cycle: ‘fuck.’”

“Yeah, think I knew that one,” Sarah said, picking herself up. 

Following her general sorry lot in life, Sarah was soon forced to once again parlay with Hunger bitch. Alison timidly asked if she would rather pause until later in the cycle, but Sarah shrugged off the suggestion, assuming her position on the floor. “Don’t want to keep my new friend waiting,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. 

The concerned faces of her crew members dissipated, replaced with that same pristine boardroom. Across the table sat the woman, her steepled fingers pressed to her lips. “You came back,” she said.

“Yeah, ‘course I did. You barely let me talk last time.”

“I told you before, Sarah, I have no interest in talking to you.” 

“I don’t think that’s true.” Sarah rested an elbow on the table, leaning forward. “I came back, sure, but so did you.”

The woman blinked. Sighing through her nose, she said, “I might have a slight interest in the basics of how exactly you found me.”

“There you go,” Sarah said. “I can tell you all about that. In exchange for some questions of my own, of course.” 

“One question,” the woman corrected. “I’ll answer one.” 

“Fine, but before that—can I get your name? You know mine, it’s only fair.”

“Rachel,” she said with an odd uncertainty. “I believe it was Rachel. It isn’t anymore.”

“Because of the scary cloud shit,” Sarah said helpfully.

The corners of Rachel’s mouth twitched. “If you will.”

“What’s with that, anyway?” 

“Is that your question?”

“Yeah, alright.”

Rachel stood, assuming a pensive position facing her wall of windows. “I am not sure how to discuss this,” she said. “In truth, I have never tried to. You’ll excuse me if my explanation is less than straightforward.”

“Hell, for a giant cloud, I’m impressed you can string two words together,” Sarah said, grinning. Rachel’s reflection did not look amused. 

“I was not always what I am now,” she said slowly. “There was a time—a very, very long time ago—when I was human, like you, Sarah. I was what I suppose you would call a businesswoman. I was successful. Revered, even. That command of public attention served me well once I became part of…”  
Rachel trailed off, observing the sky. 

“‘Part of?’” Sarah echoed. “It’s not just you, then? You’ve got other people kicking around in there?” 

“Surely that cannot come as a surprise,” Rachel said, glancing at Sarah over her shoulder. “You have watched our progress, haven’t you? You have witnessed firsthand how we add to our numbers.” 

Sarah remembered with a sickening pang every plane her crew had seen destroyed. “Don’t know why you’re bothering with me, then,” she said. “Since you’ve got all that company in there.” 

“You don’t understand.” Rachel turned to face her, visibly frustrated. Outside, the sky darkened. “Once absorbed, whatever identity you once held becomes obsolete. Insignificant, compared to our combined purpose.”

“Got it,” Sarah said. “Loads of people, one cloud. Still doesn’t explain why you’re the one meeting me.” 

“Like I said, I have a knack for commanding public attention.” The storm behind the windows loomed, threatening rain. “I believe it’s time for my question.” 

“Yeah, shoot.” 

“What do we look like, from your perspective?” 

Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s your question? Bit of an ego trip, eh?” 

“I have never seen myself.”

“Yeah, fair enough.” Sarah sighed, trying to parse her memories of the Hunger into anything other than blind fear. “It’s mostly—you’re mostly—darkness, I guess. There’s some color in there too, shimmery waves of it. That part’s nice enough.” 

Rachel looked way too pleased with herself. “I must be rather beautiful.” 

“You’re alright,” Sarah said awkwardly. “Might be easier to appreciate if you weren’t killing people.” 

“Killing isn’t our intention,” Rachel said, her momentary smugness fading. “We aren’t thoughtless murderers, Sarah.”

“Sure. It seems pretty thoughtful.”

Black fire began licking across Rachel’s palms, flitting in and out of existence. “I don’t believe you’re in a position to point fingers,” she said. “Not when your movement determines which planes become our next target.” 

“It’s not like we’re making you—”

“Of course you are.” Rachel took the seat nearest Sarah, studying her from eye level. “You said it yourself. We’ve been hunting you. There would be no need for our expansion to be such a spectacle if you handed over the Light.”

“And if we did?” Sarah asked. “What happens then? Quick and painless, we’re all cloud fodder?”

Rachel smiled. “Would you like to find out?”

“Not as long as I can help it.”

“Very well,” Rachel said, the black fire spilling over her wrists. “I suppose we’ll see how long that is.” 

Flameball to the chest—shooting pain—lying arse-over-teakettle on the ship’s floor. Who knew dying could get repetitive.

The two of them met a handful of times more, interspersed between wild interplanar adventures of every shape and size. Sarah’s questions become progressively less calculated; cycles 27 and 35 featured such hard-hitting journalism as “why are you such a wanker” and “how do you get your hair to stay like that,” which Rachel seemed to enjoy. 

In cycle 46, after multiple attempts to weasel the information out of Sarah without spending a question, Rachel finally asked what Sarah’s crew called her.

“The Hunger?” Rachel frowned. “How—simplistic.” 

“Not wrong, though, are we? Never seen you eat, all the times we’ve been here. What good is conquering the multiverse if you can’t make yourself a sandwich?” 

Rachel laughed, loud and a little unsophisticated. She’d been doing more of that, lately. “Your priorities continue to surprise me.” 

“Least I’m consistent.” 

“That you are. What would you like to know this time?” Rachel asked. “I shouldn’t keep you from Helena much longer.” 

Sarah initially regretted mentioning her sister, but, Rachel always spoke the name with an odd reverence. Maybe it was that inexplicable kindness that drove Sarah to say, “Are we mates, Rachel?” 

Rachel’s features were wiped clean of their humanity. Blinking too slowly, she said, “What?” Not an ideal response. “I—are we—”

“You have a few precious moments with the entity looking to destroy you and everyone you care about,” Rachel said, ribbons of color flickering in her pupils, “and you want to know if we’re friends?” 

“Yeah,” Sarah said defensively. “I do.” 

Rachel’s eyes were pure swirling color. “You stupid girl.” 

“Hey—”

“Despite everything I have told you about the ways of these horrible worlds,” Rachel said in a monotone.“Despite the fire of a thousand eaten suns burning your fragile body again and again and again, you persist with this maddening belief in—what? Kinship? Love? Entertaining enough, I suppose, in your unfairly extended life. But what of that life, Sarah? What of its inevitable end? What of Alison, of Delphine, of Helena, I will rend them into a memory’s memory, I will tear them from you, from everything—”

Sarah was certain she had never spoken of Alison or Delphine in Rachel’s presence. “Yeah, you’re big and scary, I get it,” she said, fighting against her voice’s waver. “You gonna answer the question?”

Rachel’s hands filled with fire. “Why do you choose to hurt?” she asked, looking at her palms. 

“You can’t get the good stuff, otherwise,” Sarah said, willing herself to stand her ground. “Love and—all that. I could show you, it doesn’t have to be like—”

Rachel lurched forward as if shoved from behind. With her hand broiling Sarah’s organs, she shouted the first fragment of a word—

And Sarah woke up on her ship.  
———————————————————————————————-

Decades and mindwipes and new friends and lost limbs and Helena bursting from an umbrella later—Sarah was riding in an elevator in the middle of a battle for existence itself, and then she wasn’t. 

Rachel, skin cracked by long rifts of oil-slick rainbow, sat at an easel. Turning from her inscrutable painting, she said, “Hello, Sarah. What happened to your eye?” 

“What happened to yours?” Sarah countered, gesturing with a wooden finger to Rachel’s eyepatch. 

With a grim smile, Rachel lifted the eyepatch to reveal a deep opalescent gouge. “You could say I have been…demoted, as it were.” 

Sarah’s stomach turned. “God, Rachel—I can heal you, let me—”

Ten dozen white eyes blinked open in the thick blackness surrounding them. “You were never a particularly ambitious cleric, as I recall,” Rachel said, returning to her painting. The eyes retreated, a few still staring angrily at Sarah. “I wouldn’t waste your spells.” 

Sarah glanced at the painting: a giant gray blob surrounded by smaller blobs, which Rachel was connecting with thin brush strokes. “What are you doing? Can I ask you, will they let you tell me—” 

“I am practicing a relaxation technique that is quite popular on this plane,” Rachel said tightly. “But enough about me. How are you, Sarah?”

“I don’t—”

“Talk,” Rachel barked. The eyes once again blossomed around them.

“Alright,” Sarah said, taking a careful step toward the easel. “I’m fine. Well, not fine, but—coupla litch wankers got my eye.” 

“Is that so,” Rachel said, her brush strokes increasing in severity.

The eyes were sleepily closing with Sarah’s every word. “And this other litch, pal of the Raven Queen’s, he’s the reason my arm—and get this, Felix is dating—”

“Felix?” 

“Yeah, my brother. Well—sort of brother. When MK first dumped us here with no memories, Felix conned me into thinking we were siblings. He’s a good guy, though. Helped out tons when Kira was little.”

Rachel’s brush paused over the canvas. “Kira. You have a daughter.” 

“Yeah,” Sarah said uncomfortably. “Haven’t seen her in a bit, ‘cause of…you know…you.” 

“She’s safe?” Rachel asked.

“For now.” 

“Good,” Rachel said, painting with quickening severity, her paint suddenly red. As the room’s eyes began to squint in suspicion, Rachel slashed at the thin lines connecting all those blobs, as if she were severing… 

“Wait,” Sarah said, approaching the easel. “Do you want me to—”

The room exploded in a chorus of screams, the eyes flaring open as a hundred hands snaked out to pull Rachel from her chair. They dragged her down into the not-quite-floor, half of her body engulfed in an instant, and Sarah was grabbing at Rachel’s arms, some primitive part of her brain realizing that they had never touched before and they never would again, she wasn’t strong enough, Rachel was sinking, sinking—

“Break the bonds, Sarah,” she rasped, her fingernails cutting into Sarah’s shoulders, and then she was gone.  
———————————————————————————————-

The marks on her shoulders never truly fade. Strangers ask her about them—strangers who, from the Day of Story and Song, know nearly everything that has ever happened to Sarah. 

None of them know Rachel. Once an all-encompassing destroyer of worlds, Rachel is erased from the collective consciousness of the multiverse. Everyone knows of the Hunger, sure, but the stiff woman in the black suit seemingly belongs only to Sarah.

That’s fine. Sarah will keep remembering, if only because her fireball-red and boardroom-black dreams rarely let her forget.


End file.
